Becoming A Person Of Influence

If you want to be a person of influence, or if you want to lead, or for that matter if you want to succeed, start reading...

Turn off your television and read two books a week next year and you’ll be counseling the Pope or the President.

It’s true what I learned all those years ago: Readers are leaders. ¹

- Don Miller

Who will join me in setting a goal of reading an average of one good book a week for the rest of 2011?

- fritz

^{1 - Read Don Miller's whole article Here
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I am currently Reading/Listening to:
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith}

Desires can be Good.

"If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work" - 1st Timothy 3:1

I have been in churches where expressing a desire to lead made one suspect. Everyone just knew a calling was something not to desire but surrender under duress.

Paul had no such ideas. God moves through holy desire, and so should we.

- fritz

Hearing Before Answering

"He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." - Proverbs 18:13

There is something perverse about human nature, more often than not we begin with a solution before we really understand the problem.

At work a team forms and decides the best way forward, then hires a consultant.

A ministry team forms and the leader, someone truly gifted in personal one-on-one ministry, does the teaching while the teachers are assigned one-on-one ministry.

A church group decides to build a prayer garden for God, but does not visit prayer gardens or consult those that use them before construction begins.

Wise leadership starts with hearing and understanding BEFORE answering, even when hearing takes longer than desired. God doesn't need our solutions, he wants our listening.

- fritz

Becoming a Good Leader

"[T]he rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, ... but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant ... just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." - Jesus (Matthew 20:25b-26, 28 NKJV)

Jesus pulled his disciples aside for a much needed leadership lesson. But he wasn't telling them how to become leaders, as many interpret this passage, he was telling them what kind of leaders to become.

We who respond to God's heart pull to follow Christ have already been chosen for leadership,¹ the focus now is how to become a good leader.

- fritz

^{1 - Related Post: Swinging Pendulums, August 4, 2010}

Swinging Pendulums

"Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." - Jesus (Matthew 19:27b-30)

Jesus daily encountered a literalist mindset. When he told the crowd he was the real bread from heaven, that they had to eat his body and drink his blood, they went wild thinking he was implementing a new form of cannibalism. The context of his statement clearly showed otherwise.¹

We, in our culture, have swung the other way to the point we don't take anything he says literally.

Jesus taught there is an actual, touchable, noticeable change coming to this world - what he called "the regeneration". Those who "spiritualize" this miss the point of why we remain here in this life; why we continue to have struggles and work through our problems.

Jesus is taking real human beings as leadership material and engaging them in an apprenticeship program. We who follow Christ were chosen to have real responsibilities in that coming renewal. All the apostles knew this and believed it literally.

"It is a faithful saying: ... If we suffer, we shall also reign with him..." - 2nd Timothy 2:11a, 12b

Don't spiritualize it to the point of irrelevance; live like it, expect it. Appreciate the privilege!

- fritz

^{1 - John 6:30-60}